An idea for an interesting series | Apartment Tech

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(First time post so forgive me if I'm in the wrong category and haven't placed this in the correct category)

So you've just somehow managed to move out of your parents place and you find yourself in a new home, a place you want to make yours. You buy the basic things, a bed, furniture, pots, pans, etc, etc; but it just doesn't feel like it's YOUR place yet. In an effort to make it yours you go out and buy some small decorations, or maybe you make your own, things that mean something to you; it still doesn't quite scratch that itch.

You sit down on your computer, it's running a bland install of Windows 10. You connect to your network through some really poorly designed router. You store everything on the one hard drive you have in your PC because you haven't set up a little network storage unit. You just wish there was a source of content to arm you with the knowledge to make the technology within your new home really YOURS.

That's my idea, a series focussing on how you use technology within your home to have a comfy living experience; all controlled and customised by you.

From the components in your machine, the little tiny details customised within your flavour of Linux, how your device and every other device interacts with the network, the rules in which packets are sent out and come into your home network, the device which actually carries out the networking, an attached way of storing data that can be accessed within and outside of your network by you, a home media server where you and your guests can enjoy all your downloaded media possibly on a big screen or one of your smaller tablet devices, some little DIY electronics projects to make a small little customisable alarm clock, a little LED reminder screen that pulls some reminders you've written for yourself on your phone/PC/any device and displays them on the screen in your home, a little notification screen or just a light that alerts you of social media notifications, your own fancy clock to mount on a wall...

Just imagine you moved into a small, empty, comfy apartment by yourself and you wanted to use your technological know how to make it the most efficient, neatest little connected home with everything under your own control; that's what my idea for the series is!

Do you guys have any thoughts, any suggestions, any little or big things you'd want to create to make your house turn into your home?

-yortug

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Very long post. I would actually want to watch this

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this is kinda what I am looking for

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Seems promising, for example as a YouTube show or something. One thing i might have added is for instance a smart home controller with say Z-Wave or 433Mhz devices around the apartment. That would allow for integrations for lighting, heating, notifications, Text to speech, sound systems, media players or even sprinklers for plants.

You could even set up so that when Plex media server starts playing something, it turns down the lighting in the living room. Turning off the lights and heating when the phone is outside the home. Motion activated lights. Notifications if someone rings the doorbell. There is a lot of possibilities.

There is even more possibilities if you are willing to do some DIY work. The Arduino is a good platform for this, since its simple and easy to work with for newer users.

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Maybe ask Nathan from Ex Machina for tips.... And a few million$
/s
Good idea for a blog tho!

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Good to hear, I had a feeling there's a lot of people that might be in the situation of moving out and have an interest in 'teching' up their home for themselves instead of buying some overpriced, barely functional router or something similar.

All of your ideas are great! I didn't even think about a nice universal controller type of thing, it would be even cooler (but probably bring some security issues) if you could have a little GUI panel sitting on your desktop to control the lighting, sound and heating within your home.

And yeah, the idea was to have it as some sort of a YouTube series, would love Wendell to pioneer this on the Level1Techs channel!

I didn't mean as a full on television series, just someone who knows their tech and security (which is very important in this sort of stuff), and has a passion for DIY sorts of things - someone like Wendell. On Level1Techs they already did a 'DIY router' video which was really interesting, but I was thinking more along the lines of people who are willing to invest a couple $100 into a router that should (hopefully) easily last 5 - 10 years, as opposed to making a ghetto rig from a $25 ageing Dell machine.

Not that there's anything wrong with that, especially if you're on a budget and just want to play around with the tech. But my idea for the series was tackling it from the standpoint of a consumer that could:
A) Go to the store/search online for a router, find the most 'feature filled' one that fits their use case, buy it for like $300
B) Pick out some parts for a super small form factor, low power, yet still somewhat powerful PC; buy an PCIE ethernet port card; load pf sense onto it; and have spent roughly the same amount yet have a router which is (probably) 100x more powerful and 100x more functional/versatile

Looking at routers would just be one example of getting overcharged for a bad product vs doing it yourself to suit your every need; alarm clocks, clocks, lighting, controllers, NAS/media servers, personal 'cloud' server, universal reminder system, etc, etc.

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I'm glad you like the ideas, i have plenty of them. I currently work for a smart home company where i get to set up smart controls for house owners. Feel free to send me a message if you want some input on what devices and software to choose. Also, not every smart home hub is online-only. We use the HomeSeer smart home system for our customers, which can even work without a internet connection. You could even host a open source smart home central as a virtual machine in a home server. (For instance OpenHAB)

Yeah! Would be awesome to see Wendell do a show like that. But i doubt he will, since he is very negative towards IoT in general. I kinda get why he is negative to it, with the latest news about smart home devices being in a botnet. But there are options for entirely self hosted services.

I don't think having a 300$ router would be that useful. In my opinion its better to have a Pfsence router on a small formfactor PC. (Perhaps this router could double as a server for the apartment?) I'd also be worried about the security of a purchased router. There is no telling what happens when the router reaches its end of support from the manufacturer. Not to mention updates are usually few and far between. With a Pfsence router you can mannage updates as you want. (Pfsence is also open source, which means it will most likely have frequent updates and patches)